


The Man Inside

by XtaticPearl



Series: The BETA Compendium [3]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Implied Bullying, Misgendering, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-24
Updated: 2016-11-24
Packaged: 2018-09-01 21:54:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8639626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XtaticPearl/pseuds/XtaticPearl
Summary: “You ready?” Naomi, his polar opposite and twin sister asked in a hushed whisper from his right. Nate knew what she was wearing without having to look at her. She had always had the same style, always worn the same range of boundless dresses that defied the world. It had been him who had been the more conservative, the one who had believed in rules.Well, that was back when he had worn dresses too and had felt them suffocate him instead of making him smile like his sister.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I have fallen deeper in love with my OCs and I cannot get out of this hole now. This is my new home.

There were unending ways to tell his story, Nate thought as he cleared his throat and smoothed dry palms on his thighs. Unending ways, but what way would be the best of them? Every story has a beginning, a start to it all, but Nate wonders about his own.

Does a start count when it had happened twice in two different centuries?

“You ready?” Naomi, his polar opposite and twin sister asked in a hushed whisper from his right. Nate knew what she was wearing without having to look at her. She had always had the same style, always worn the same range of boundless dresses that defied the world. It had been him who had been the more conservative, the one who had believed in rules.

Well, that was back when he had worn dresses too and had felt them suffocate him instead of making him smile like his sister.

“I dunno,” he whispered with a rueful smile and caught her eyes. She didn’t say anything but shot him a small smile that spelled _pride_  and _belief_ , things he had lacked a decade ago when his second beginning had kicked off. Naomi simply squeezed his knee and settled back into her seat, flipping her mane behind her shoulder with all the ease of a woman who had grown into it.

 _A woman_ , Nate thought with a small touch of hysteria. Something that was tagged on both twins at one point. And would still have been the same, if not for the day when he had found a voice.

Or rather, been forced into using his voice.

_**Twelve years back:** _

A changing room should not become a source of shame for someone, he thought as he ran a tired hand over his well-conditioned hair and glanced down. _One more day_ , he thought to himself as he eyed his reflection and recalled the name he would be called when he stepped out of the room that could well be a closet. A name that didn’t _belong._ It was ridiculous to be thinking in terms of a few years or a vague category of time to keep his sanity intact, so he had always stuck to a simpler concept.

One more day. One day at a time.

It was easier that way. It was exhausting that way. But it was the only way he could see a compromise between who he was and who he projected as to the world.

“It’s just a dress,” he said and _God_ , he hated his voice. Hated the curves he was supposed to feel ‘blessed’ about. Hated everything about -

“It’s just a dress,” he exhaled, shutting down that train of thought before slipping on the matte beige and granite black sheath dress. 

“Looks good,” he said out loud.

 _I can’t breathe_ , he thought in a scream.

He wore the dress though, took a breath, and slipped out of the room.

“How’s it?” he asked with a put upon smile.

Amanda and Pepper stop bickering for a second and look at him. Pepper smiles softly and Mandy, as usual, gets her ‘critically analyzing’ look on. Where Naomi was bold, in your face, goddess, and Pepper was classy, professional, cool, Mandy was chic, utility-based, and ready to kill. Their style spoke volumes of their personalities and Nate sometimes wondered what they saw him as.

Finally, with her X-ray vision perusal of his attire, Mandy nodded once, a satisfied smirk sliding onto her face, “Amazing as always, Ni-”

He didn’t want to hear the name but there it was. And in it’s face, the compliment meant nothing, because it didn’t feel like it was meant for him.

“Thanks,” he winked though, and chanted in his head again. 

 _One more day_. 

Outside, when all of them slid into the car after their ‘retail therapy courtesy Aunt Maria for Tony’s latest prank that cost them all endless pain’, Nate caught Joseph’s eye in the rear view mirror. Joseph was as different as possible from his younger sister Sharon, and it showed in everything. Joseph was also attempting abstinence from substance, was Nate’s best friend and held the terrible burden of being his sole confidant.

 _I’m sorry_ , his eyes seemed to say in the mirror, and Nate can’t look at the expression, turning away to gaze out the window.

 _One more day_.

The concept gets really old when he hears his name being called and knows it’s not his name. It gets really tiring when he wishes people would subtract a letter from the pronoun they use on him. It gets really heavy when he’s laughing with his friends and then suddenly realizes that they’re his friends without knowing him.

Laughter becomes a fickle mistress, and for a while it’s okay. For 18 years, it has been okay. 

Maybe not. Quite not. But he has survived and he has survived it without a voice, because he doesn’t know the words. Doesn’t know what to demand when what he is given is treated as a privilege by some.

It is exhausting, he thinks as he looks up binders discreetly. It is exhausting, he thinks as he trains to become a teacher and doesn’t believe he has learnt much himself. It is exhausting, he thinks as he lies.

And one day, this exhaustion gets pushed too far.

“I’m fine,” he says as he stares at the floor, huddled in a couple of extra large towels over his messed up shirt. He can feel the bruises, each one aching raw and reminding him of the madness from two hours ago. “I’m fine,” he says as he rubs his thumb over the soft material of the towel. _It’s blue_ , he thinks absently and observes how his skin contrasts against the pale cloth.

“You’re bleeding,” Tony points out bluntly and Nate can see him sitting tight, coiled up in thinly veiled tension, just across the table. There’s a cat pun mug in front of the genius and the coffee i it must have become cold by now. Nate knows his own has.

“Isn’t everybody?” he replies with a sardonic quirk of his lips and he knows how hollow his voice sounds, knows how much he is creeping them out, all of them. Naomi utters a hissed expletive from his side and gets up so quick that she almost topples her chair, before walking out in quick strides, quivering in anger with every step.

“Bit dramatic, ain’t she?” Nate muses out loud and Tony stares at him before shooting a small, tired grin despite himself. Nate sees the barely there laugh lines on the half-Italian’s smooth face, the desperate attempt to grow a bear, a _goatee_ , going horribly wrong with ridiculous patches of facial hair making him look more like a twink with a gangster phase than a CEO.

“Your beard sucks,” Nate informs him and Tony twitches in his seat, a surprised expression fading into a slow smirk, and Nate feels too tired to bite back words so the rest slips out, “I wish I had a beard.”

He thinks he hears Mandy’s quiet _Fuck_  from behind him and knows that Joseph is shaking his head at the turn of events but Nate is just so goddamned exhausted to think about this dramatic reveal of his entire life’s reality in a whirlwind of two hours. All because some drunk jerk had a problem with Nate’s clothes. And chest. Or the hiding of it.

“We could -,” Tony starts and stops, tapping his fingers lightly on the table once, eyes doing a quick flit to Mandy behind Nate before looking back at him, “We could try that out. If you want it.”

Nate blinks and feels a drop of stray blood drop from his cropped hair onto the table. Nobody blinks at that. He opens his mouth and closes it, clearing his throat once.

“Really”

“Yeah,” Tony shrugs and shares a grin with Joseph who comes to lean against him with an eye-roll, before grinning at Nate, “We could be beard buddies. It’ll be good practice.”

It’s completely callous and casual and devil-may-care. It doesn’t hold the sensitivity or empathy that people expect to show or be shown to. It’s a brush off and an acceptance. It’s ridiculous.

It cracks Nate up and he loses it in hysteria. Tony is still grinning at him, without shame, without maturity, without glove hands. It’s exhilarating. 

“You asshole,” Nate wheezes and it sparks off a snort from Mandy, which quickly turns into all of them laughing, without any real reason or maybe with too many reasons, squeezing tears from their eyes and clutching aching stomachs.

When Naomi comes back from wherever she had gone to cool off, she doesn’t bat an eye at the still laughing group of morons they call friends, and simply comes to Nate and drops a card in front of him.

It’s his library card and Naomi has taken a sharpie to it, with a vicious strike out of his name. In its place, above the scratched out black ink, is a scrawled out name.

 _Nate Jones_ , it says.

“Happy Birthday,” she says with a tiny smirk and Nate is still gazing at the card with his name, a name he had chosen instead of one he had borne on his shoulders for years.

He turns 19 that night and does it as a man, with those who learn to strike out a letter from his earlier pronoun, learn to look at his decision instead of his body. 

It changes everything. It doesn’t change much. It is his second beginning to the world. It is his first reveal of his true beginning.

“Do you want to do it?” Mandy asks over the phone during Christmas, calm and patient the way she always is when she prepares for a battle.

“I don’t know,” he says and eyes the pamphlet on the bed. He remembers costs, choices, college, confidence, community, and every other similar word. He thinks of them all, of the kids wearing a paler skin giving him odd glances from before his nineteenth birthday. He thinks of the doctors Peggy, Mama Rhodes and Aunt Maria hinted at. He thinks of the nightmares and the conflicted looks during Thanksgiving.

“I don’t know,” he says and Mandy simply hums before launching into a recalling of her latest debate with her senior.

“Do you _want_  to do it?” Joseph asks during Fourth Of July, under the firework lit sky. He looks sober, a bit quiet but not unhealthy and Nate doesn’t think about hospitals and IVs.

“Maybe,” he says and Joseph nudges his shoulder before yelling at Sharon for taking his share of fireworks.

“I want to do it,” Nate says as he stands in front of Maria Stark’s mahogany desk, a file in hand and months of prepared confidence in his voice. The binder feels a little too tight on his chest and the hair on his legs seem to collect sweat. But he stands and says it, firm and stable in a way he knew his internal voice wouldn’t sound like.

The Stark matriarch looked up from her own file and looked at him for a whole minute in silence before gesturing at the chair with a small smile. 

“Sit down, Nate,” she says and it feels like a new revelation every time he hears his name from somebody without hesitation or confusion, “How can I help?”

“I want to do it,” he says again, gripping the file a bit tighter before offering it to the woman across him quietly, “But I want to do it right.”

Maria Stark takes the file with a raised eyebrow, flips it open and reads the first page. Her eyes widen for a second before her lips curve into a softer grin than before.

“Tell me about your dream,” she says as she looks up, all business and focused and _interested_. So Nate begins speaking, about the idea he wanted to give shape to if possible. To the dream, _his dream_  as she called it.

“It’s…a realizable dream, Mr. Jones,” she says and Nate wants to cry, because she has this look of _respect_ in her eyes, one professional to another equal. This isn’t Aunt Maria anymore, he realizes with a dawning sense of awe. This is an investor who is looking his way.

“It’s a privilege done right, Ms. Stark,” he replies and notes the there-and-miss flash of a small smile. _Pride_ , he thinks as she regards him with a new light and relaxes a bit into the seat. 

It’s exhausting, going through his own transition, keeping track of his academic progress and dipping his toes into the new project of the Maria Stark Foundation. _TransPower_ is his brainchild and he wants to dedicate his entire time to it but as his grandpa rightly points out, he has to manage his time wisely between all his priorities. Never had Howling Commando Gabe Jones sounded more proud when he had volunteered to help with the project and Nate will never forget bawling into Joseph and Naomi’s shoulders after that scene. 

It’s exhausting, keeping track of every change, every hormonal, emotional, physical, and mental change in his life. It’s exhausting to drive ahead towards his academic goal and plan out his future while not leaving room for the opinions of haters who throw out proposed laws and ideas to ‘correct’ him. It’s exhausting every step of the way, but for once, Nate is happy for the exhaustion to walk beside him. Because he finds worth there, hope and dreams there.

“Wasn’t she a -”

“ _He_ ,” Sharon corrects an ex-high school senior during an unexpected lunch at the new sushi place.

“But you were so beautiful!”

“Still is,” Roger shrugs at an ex-fling who bumps into them during a grocery run.

“You’re throwing away a gift”

Tony gets Happy to throw out an ex-professor with a sneering voice in the convention.

“You weren’t born this way”

“Hey Aunt K, how’s Uncle Jo’s new secretary doing for him? Old guy sleeping better now?,” Naomi smiles her razor-sharp grin with imagined _Kill Bill_  music in the background before she spills red wine over the table during Thanksgiving.

It’s exhausting and sometimes hilarious but always reassuring to find his band of misfits fitting perfectly around him when he is pushed. 

Which is why when he comes out of a changing room eleven years after a miserable experience with one, he waggles his eyebrows and strikes a pose instead of putting on a forced grin.

“How’s it?” he asks and this time, he hears the right compliment after the right name.

**_Present:_ **

“…and now, please welcome the brain behind this project. The man who conceived this plan - educator par excellence, activist, and one of the Foundation’s strongest pioneers, Mr. Nate Jones!” Pepper finishes introducing him and leads the thundering applause to welcome him.

Nate breathes out and gets up to take the spotlight. To let the man inside him take charge of his life again.

“What a time for change,” he begins and looks into the sea of gathered young trans community, looking up to him in the dark hall lit by bright lights.

There were unending ways to tell his story, Nate knew. But sometimes the best way was the one that came in unexpected moments.

His, he thought, began in a room of change. And change he did. Not in manners that shouldn’t have, but in ways that he had always waited to change in.

As he stood addressing a crowd on unknown and familiar faces, Nate breathed out with a realization.

His one more day had passed after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback please?


End file.
